BROTHER HECKER
THE Redemptorist novitiate at St. Trond, as well as the house of
studies at Wittem, Holland, had been established be the immediate
disciples of St. Clement Hofbauer. That great servant of God had
introduced the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer into Austria
and other parts of Germany several years before the time of which we
write. A saint himself, and of wonderful missionary gifts, he was
worthy of the title of second founder of the order of St. Alphonsus
Liguori. St. Clement was the son of a Moravian peasant, and in early
life had been a baker by trade. St. Alphonsus was still alive when
Clement, while on a pilgrimage to Rome, was enrolled there in the
Redemptorist novitiate. This event was auspicious of the future of
the entire community, since his apostolate was the means of
propagating the order among the northern nations, and giving to it
some of its present dominant characteristics of Teutonic discipline;
whereas in the land of its origin it has never fully recovered from
the disasters which befell it during the lifetime of its founder. In
Germany and the Low Countries, on the other hand, the children of St.
Alphonsus and St. Clement were, at the time when the three Americans
joined them, the most powerful preachers in the Church. Their
vocation called them to give missions--spiritual exercises lasting
from a week to a month--to the faithful in every part of Catholic
Europe, not excepting France. Their fame was established as the
foremost preachers of penance and of the Redeemer's love for sinners.
St. Trond was the novitiate of the Belgian Province, which embraced
Belgium and Holland as well as the newly established convents in
England and America. The Provincial was Father de Held, whom we saw
in Baltimore while he was there on a tour of inspection of the
American houses. He was an Austrian German, a man of noble presence,
matured spirituality and an accomplished missionary. Father Hecker
knew him well in after years, and always counted him as one who
understood his spirit and approved his aspirations.
The convent in St. Trond was in a narrow street of the quaint little
city; so narrow, indeed, that one almost fancied that he could touch
both walls by stretching out his arms. It was a solid old structure,
built in the first half of the fifteenth century by St. Colette for
her Poor Clares, an ample guarantee of its conformity to the ideas of
religious poverty. It was not architecturally fine, but was a curious
and interesting building. Isaac in one of his letters home says that
the house was very roomy, with long corridors having cells on each
side. It abutted on a church which was open to the public and served
by the fathers; a window in the convent chapel looked into the
sanctuary. Attached to the house was a garden of three or four acres.
The country around the town is a typical Flemish landscape, flat,
fertile, thickly dotted with farm buildings, and highly cultivated.
The people are wholly Catholic. The town is an old one, and in its
time has had some military importance. Our young novices often walked
upon the ramparts which encircled it. In the neighborhood are
structures which were built before the Christian era; quite near by
was one of Cæsar's round towers, as well as the deserted ruins of an
ancient city named Leo. Curious old churches and monasteries might
often be seen by the novices on their long walks into the country.
All this antiquity was the more pleasing to the American novices
because in their own land the forests, the rivers, and the
everlasting hills are all that represent the distant past.
Besides twenty novices there were ten or twelve fathers at St. Trond,
who either served the church or went about on missions; and there
were also a number of lay brothers. By nationality the greater
portion of the novices were Belgians and Hollanders, the others being
mostly Germans. The language of the house was French, though Latin
was sometimes used. Of course this was an added difficulty to Brother
Hecker, as he was now called, for he knew practically nothing of that
language, though he had studied it a little. But he attacked it
resolutely and, as one of his companions said, learned it heels over
head. He never feared to make mistakes, nor dreaded a smile at his
expense, and as a consequence was soon able to talk to any one. But
his French was always curious, and when he took his turn at reading
during meals he gave the community some hearty laughs.
All the new-comers were invested with the Redemptorist habit about
three weeks after their arrival, in September, 1845. "You can scarce
imagine the happiness I felt on my arrival here," he writes to his
mother in his first letter home. "For three days my heart was filled
with joy and gladness. I was like one who had been transported to a
lovelier, a purer, and a better world." He tells her that he had
waited for a fortnight before writing, to learn the place, and then,
after expressing his satisfaction with everything in such sentences
as the above, he fills the rest of the letter with arguments in favor
of the Catholic Church and exhortations to join it. Such was the
burden of all of his letters home from both St. Trond and Wittem. We
have ten written from the novitiate. An exception must be made as to
one which describes in detail the daily order of life in the
novitiate. It is addressed to his mother.
He tells her that the first bell rings at half-past four in the
morning and the last at half-past nine at night. The time is divided
between various common and private devotional exercises, including
Mass, meditations, recitation of the office in common, study of the
rule of the order, spiritual conferences, spiritual reading, and the
like. Silence is broken only for an hour after dinner and another
hour after supper. About an hour of out-door exercise is taken every
day, and a long walk once a week and on feast-days. All of Thursday
in each week and the more important feasts of the year are days of
recreation, when silence need not be observed during the greater part
of the day, and much relaxation is otherwise allowed. All Fridays are
days of total silence and special devotion. The letter fails to
mention the discipline, or flagellation, which was taken twice a week.
He ends thus: "The time of the novitiate is one year, and its object
is to prove our vocation, and form the religious character--the
heart. The exercises may seem too many to you, but to us they are
quite otherwise. Their frequent changes prevent them from being
monotonous, and their variety makes them agreeable. Our time passes
without our taking count of it, and our joy is that of a pure
conscience, and our happiness that of a clean heart."
It might seem a matter of peculiar difficulty for a free nature like
Isaac Hecker's to conform to the stiff rules of such a system. But
this was not the case, and a closer look into the matter shows that
such a regimen is of much use to an earnest man, however free his
character, at the outset of his spiritual career. Experience proves
that one test of the genuineness of the interior disposition to serve
God perfectly is readiness to surrender exterior peculiarities. There
is nothing in the special graces of God which should hinder a placid
acceptance of the routine of a novitiate. The merging of individual
conduct into the common custom is the contribution which community
life must exact from every member. If a man is to be a hermit he may
act from individual impulses alone, though, even so, rarely without
counsel. But if one would live and work with others, special graces
and individual traits of character must not be allowed to interfere
with a certain degree of uniformity. On the other hand, that
uniformity should not be allowed to cripple the spontaneous action of
natural independence, and the inspiration of graces which are
personal.
It must be granted that with many souls a novitiate will tend to a
routine use of religious aids. Yet it cannot be denied that its
discipline forcibly concentrates the scattered purposes of life into
one powerful stream. It contributes to symmetry of character. It
furnishes efficacious tests of sincerity. It drills disorderly
natures into regularity. It acquaints the beginner with the
literature of his holy profession, and herein it is of priceless
worth. And finally, it provides advisers of approved wisdom during
the period of the spiritual life when counsel is most needed, as well
as most gratefully accepted. But if it fails in each of these
particulars, as no doubt it sometimes does, the novitiate may be said
never to fail in detecting an inaptitude for the common life, if such
exists; that is to say, a serious lack of the qualities which fit one
to get along in peace with the brethren.
Into the novitiates of the religious orders, and into the seminaries
which hold their place for the secular priesthood, the noblest men of
our race have entered joyfully; some to be wedded to the Divine
Spouse in the quiet seclusion of holy contemplation, and others, of
the more militant orders, to be trained to follow worthily the
standards of the apostolic warfare against vice and error.
The novice-master was puzzled by his three Americans, though Brother
McMaster was easily comprehended--an over-frank temperament,
impulsive, and demonstrative. Not only were his banners always
hanging on the outward wall, but his plan of campaign also. The other
two were a study, and Brother Hecker was a curiosity. Yet both were
cheerful, obedient, earnest, courageous. The novice-master was
annoyed at the Americans' incessant demand for the reason why of all
things permitted, and the reason why not of all things prohibited;
until at last Brother Walworth was named Brother Pourquoi. As to
Brother Hecker, besides showing the same stand-and-deliver
propensity, he occupied much of the time of conversation in
philosophizing, plunging into the obscurest depths of metaphysical
and ethical problems, using terms which were often quite unfamiliar
to strictly orthodox ears, and exhibiting a fearless independence of
thought generally conceded among Catholics only to practised
theologians. Yet the novice-master was well pleased with both, though
we shall see that his journey with Brother Hecker was for some time
in the dark.
When the Fourth of July came around he learned that it was the great
American holiday, and he called the three Americans to him and asked,
"How do you celebrate your national holiday at home?" "By shooting
off fire-crackers," they answered with a twinkle. This being out of
the question, and the grand military parade which was next suggested
also impracticable, Brothers Walworth and Hecker both exclaimed,
"Ginger-bread!" "Take all you want," was the answer, "and go off on a
long walk, and spend the day by yourselves." And of they went to
wander among the ruins of the outposts of the old Roman republic, and
make Fourth of July speeches in honor of the great new Republic
beyond the sea. Those who have been novices themselves will not be
surprised at the boyishness of these three manly characters under the
circumstances.
Isaac Hecker's spirit was not anywise cramped by the routine
exercises of the novitiate; he made them easily and well. He always
seemed to his companions what he actually was, and what he described
himself to be in his letters to New York, a cheerful and contented
novice. But, as one of them since expressed it, he was not a "dude"
novice, not the very pink of external perfection, and had a long
period of interior trial. He did not exhibit at any time the least
hesitancy about his vocation, for his mind was made up. Yet once,
when he took a walk with Brother Walworth to visit a house of
Recollects, Franciscans of the strict observance, both he and his
companion were greatly struck by that charming poverty which the poor
man of Assisi has bequeathed to his children; they did ask each other
whether they had not made a mistake. This question, however, was but
the expression of a shadowy doubt, vanishing as suddenly as it had
come.
The novice-master was Father Othmann, and he was by universal
testimony entirely competent for his place. He was himself the
novitiate. Its austerities, and they were not trifling, its long and
frequent prayer, its total seclusion from the world, all were refined
and adjusted to each one by passing through his soul and being
dispensed by his wisdom. Father Hecker regarded him as a very
remarkable man. He was a student of character, and wise and sagacious
in varying the application of religious influences according to
temperament and spiritual gifts. Under him the danger of formalism,
which occurs to one's mind immediately as the incessant round of
exercises is mentioned, was rendered remote; for he gave his
instructions, and especially used the chapter of faults, in a way to
infuse into the souls of the novices the ever-recurring freshness of
individual initiative. His model (after St. Alphonsus) was St.
Francis de Sales. He followed him constantly in his doctrine and
methods, and often spoke of him and quoted him. Of other methods and
their advocates he spoke respectfully, but, however much they were in
vogue, he did not follow them. Brother Hecker was a faithful student
in his school and learned much from Father Othmann. The latter
especially insisted on the principle of accepting Providence as the
chief dispenser of mortifications. He had no objection to
self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor
them. He taught his young men that the traditional practices of
devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good
mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their
souls pliant subjects of the Divine guidance in the interior life, as
well as submissive to the order of God in the events of His external
Providence.
The assistant novice-master, who took Father Othmann's place during
his absence, was a Walloon. His name we have been unable to discover,
but he was a holy priest, held up to the novices as their model and
esteemed by them as the saint of the novitiate. He was a very
pleasant man withal, and no doubt added in every way to the fruits of
the long year of spiritual trial.
When Isaac Hecker presented himself as a novice he took his place
among the youths learning the A, B, C of the spiritual life, while he
himself had experienced for many months the most rare dealings of the
Holy Ghost with the soul. This could not fail to come to the
knowledge of Father Othmann, and, taken with the other peculiarities
of his subject, to elicit his most skilful treatment. "Père Othmann,
my novice-master," said Father Hecker, in after years, "had a right
to be puzzled by me, and so he watched me more than he did the
others." He watched and studied him and gradually applied the two
sovereign tests of genuine spirituality, obedience and humiliation.
These were all the more efficacious in this case, because Brother
Hecker was a man of great native independence of character and
naturally of an extremely sensitive disposition.
Such was the common austerity of the life that it took some ingenuity
to inflict on a novice a mortification which had not grown stale by
use in the case of one or more of the others. But in searching the
interior of the soul the director could find tender places into which
his weapon would be plunged to the bone. But it is more than probable
that he misunderstood Brother Hecker, and that for a time he even
suspected him of being under delusions. For several months, at any
rate, he treated him at his weekly confession with the utmost rigor,
producing indescribable mental agony. Many years afterwards, and when
near his death, Father Hecker once said to the writer: "While I was
kneeling among the novices, outside Père Othmann's room, waiting to
go to confession, I often begged of God that it might be His will
that I should die before my turn came, so dreadful an ordeal had
confession become on account of the severity of the novice-master."
Yet, as recorded in the memoranda, the victim was eager for the
sacrifice when the knife was not actually lifted over him. "I begged
the novice-master," he said on another occasion, "to watch me
carefully, and when he saw me bent on anything to thwart me. I did
not know any other way of overcoming my nature. He took me at my
word, too. For example, once a week only we had a walk, a good long
one, and we enjoyed it, and it was necessary for us. I enjoyed it
very much indeed. So, sometimes when we were starting out, my
thoughts bounding with the anticipated pleasure, he would stop me
midway on the stairs: 'Frère Hecker,' he would say, 'please remain at
home, and instead of the walk wash and clean the stair-way.' It would
nearly kill me to obey, such was my disappointment, grief,
humiliation."
In conjunction with these trials from without came a recurrence of
resistless interior impulses. "During my novitiate," he is recorded
as saying in 1885, "I found myself under impulses of grace which it
seemed to me impossible to resist. One was to conquer the tendency to
sleep. I slept on boards or on the floor. After a while I was able to
do with five hours sleep, and often with only three, in the
twenty-four. Père Othmann was not unwilling for me to follow these
impulses as soon as he became convinced of their imperative strength.
Yet I now see that such practices were in a certain sense mistaken.
They necessarily consumed in mortification vitality that I could now
use, if I had it, in a more useful way. Still, how could I help it?"
The end of this period of his humiliations, which was not far from
the end of his noviceship, is thus described: "One day after
Communion I was making my half-hour thanksgiving in my room, when
Père Othmann came in and examined me about my form of prayer. Oh! it
was just then that I had reached the passive state of prayer: _I_ did
nothing, _Another_ did everything in my prayer. From that time,
having put me down in the gutter, the novice-master raised me up to
the pinnacle, whereas I should have been in neither place." On
another occasion he told how the change of prayer had happened: "I
was on my knees one day after Communion, making a regular
thanksgiving, when suddenly God stopped me, and I was told not to
pray that way any more. Question: How were you told--what words were
spoken to you? Answer: Cease your activity. I have no need of your
words when I possess your will. 'Tis I, not you, who should act. My
action in you is more important than your thanks. I cease to act when
you begin, and begin to act when you cease. Be still--tranquil--
listen--suffer me to act. Abandon yourself to me, and I will take
care of you."
When in Rome, in the winter of 1857-8, he was compelled by
circumstances, which will be told in their place, to make a written
summary of his spiritual experience. In it he says: "My novitiate was
one of sore trials, for the master of novices seemed not to
understand me, and the manifestation of my interior to him was a
source of the greatest pain. After about nine or ten months he
appeared to recognize the hand of God in my direction in a special
manner, conceived a great esteem (for me), and placed unusual
confidence in me, and allowed me without asking it, though greatly
desired, daily Communion. During my whole novitiate no amount of
austerity could appease my desire for mortification, and several gifts
in the way of prayer were bestowed on me."
On March 6, 1886, while in a state of almost utter physical
prostration, he communicated to the writer the following: "Forty
years ago, in my novitiate, God told me that I was to suffer in every
fibre of my being." "Perhaps," was remarked, "you have not suffered
all yet." Answer: "Perhaps not, but God has kept His promise in every
limb, member, and function of my body." It may become necessary to
refer again to these interior experiences. We leave them with the
remark that his novitiate was characterized by a continuance of
Divine interferences similar to those which had occurred at intervals
from the time he was driven from home and business to seek the
fulfilment of his aspirations.
The following is the record of a brave soul's failure to become a
Redemptorist. It is given in a letter dated September 14, 1846:
"Brother McMaster, who returns to the U.S., gives me the opportunity
of writing a few lines to you," etc. It was a profound disappointment
for Mr. McMaster to be obliged to return home a layman, and it
shocked his companions. It is a little singular that Father Othmann
told him that his vocation was not to be a religious, but an editor.
He carried with him Brother Hecker's messages of affection to his
friends and relatives, and rosaries of Isaac's own making for his
mother and his brother George.
Writing to the latter, on August 26, 1846, after some tender and
affectionate words, he says: "I have now nearly eight weeks until the
time of taking the vows. Oh that it were but eight minutes, nay,
eight seconds, when I shall be permitted, with the favor and grace of
God, to consecrate my whole being and life to His sole service!
Millions of worlds put on top of one another could not purchase from
me my vocation. We make fifteen days' retreat before we take the
vows. You must recommend me very particularly to the Rt. Rev. Bishop
McCloskey; tell him the time of my taking the vows (Feast of St.
Teresa, October 15), and give him my humble request to remember me at
that time in his prayers."
On the feast of St. Teresa, October 15, 1846, therefore, the two
American novices took their vows, and became members of the
Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. On the very morning of that
event, at half-past eight, Brother Hecker wrote a letter to his
mother, in which he goes over all of his trials and experiences in
following the Divine guidance since he first quitted business. He
breathes intense affection in every word, and writes in a solemn
mood. We would give the letter to the reader entire, but that he has
already learned what it narrates. It ends thus: "Dear mother, in half
an hour I go to the chapel to consecrate my whole being for ever to
God and His service. What peace, what happiness this gives me! To
live alone for His love, and to love all for His love, in His love,
and with His love!"
After the ceremony was over he wrote as follows to his brother John:
"DEAR BROTHER JOHN: This day, with the special grace of God, I have
taken the holy vows of the Catholic religion, which are obedience,
poverty, chastity, and final perseverance. These vows bind me to the
Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer for my natural life, and the
Congregation in the same manner to me. Thanks to God for His kind
Providence. My vocation is once for all, for ever settled, firmly
fixed. During the year and more of my novitiate I have not had any
temptation against my vocation, nor any desire on my part to return
to the world.
"As you were not certain whether I would return after the novitiate
or not, I suppose you left my name in connection with yours and
brother George's in the firm. But now that this (separation) is
certain, would it not be best for you to destroy that agreement we
made with each other some time ago, that no future difficulty can or
may arise? All this I leave to your judgments; and as for me, dear
brothers John and George, in respect to the business, you may regard
me as though I had never been connected with it, nor had any title or
claim upon it whatever. I am simply your dear brother Isaac, who
loves you from the depth of his heart. This love, be assured, will
never be diminished by any event; whatever happens will only give me
new motives to love you the more. My conduct is under your
inspection, yours especially, dear John, as being the eldest of us
three, and I trust your sincere love for me will not let any word or
action of mine pass unnoticed which may be the least unpleasant to
you.
"My love, my gratitude, and my prayers to and for you all. Remember
me to all my friends.
"Your brother, ISAAC.
"St. Trond, October 15, 1846.
"I have forgotten to say that if you have not already made use of the
things that I left, such as clothing, you should do so."
In bidding adieu to the novitiate we think Father Hecker's
last meeting with his old novice-master, as we find it recorded
in the memoranda, will be of interest: "Père Othmann was one
of my best friends. Shortly before he died I happened to be in
France (this was after leaving the Redemptorists), and I heard
that he was extremely ill at the Redemptorist house at Nancy.
I wrote to him that if he wished I would call and see him. He
answered me at once, begging me to come immediately, as he
desired above all things to see me before he died. So I made a
journey to Nancy, and we had some hours of pleasant conference
together, and I bade him farewell."
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